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On Monday, Reps. Scott Rigell, Randy Forbes and Rob Wittman lashed the sequester at a forum in a packed downtown hotel ballroom. The 300-person crowd had little appetite for placing blame. To this military community, the sequester is personal.

Virginia Beach and nearby Newport News, represented by Rigell in the 2nd Congressional District, is now at the center of the sequester debate as it’s home to a large population of active and retired servicemen and women, military interests and the Newport News shipyard. President Barack Obama will use the shipyard as a backdrop on Tuesday to call on Congress to stop the sequester.

All three Republican congressmen said they’ve been sounding the alarm over sequestration for a year, and they agreed that there isn’t much use in pointing fingers three days before the cuts are set to be implemented. They are just ready to work on a way to fix it.

“I’m calling on leadership from Speaker [John] Boehner, [Senate Majority] Leader [Harry] Reid and President Obama to put what is best for our country ahead of anything else. And that, in my view, is not the case right now,” Rigell said, adding later that he believes the House should be in session every day until the sequester is solved.

He’ll have the opportunity to tell Obama just that on Tuesday when the president travels to Newport News: Rigell is hitching a ride to the event on Air Force One the White House announced.

At this point, Rigell, Forbes and Wittman represent a small minority of Republicans who are actively trying to stop the sequester before its implementation. Those Republicans are mostly from congressional districts with large military populations or bases that could see a huge impact from the large cuts to the Pentagon budget expected as part of the budget tightening.

Many in the Republican Conference believe that the sequester should be allowed to take hold even if that means some pain in their communities. They think that’s the only way Washington will ever tighten its belt. And they are completely unwilling to swallow any hint of tax hikes Obama insists on as part of a deal to avoid or replace the sequester.

But even among the three Virginia congressmen, there are divisions on how to approach the cuts. Wittman said there are smarter ways to address deficit reduction that don’t hurt the military. Rigell said there are ways to cut defense spending that wouldn’t be as harmful as the sequester. Forbes said he introduced a bill that would take national defense spending out of the sequester altogether and not cut spending elsewhere.